Him with his flattop cut,
bowtie on short sleeve shirt,
bad pants often plaid pants,
cheap shoes, pocket protector,
lived with his elderly mom
and drove her older Cadillac.  

Him coulda fallen
out of the typecasting folder
of a typecasting agent
but I knew him, he was real,
not at all a bad guy,
an accountant, one of the best,
loan you his money on your word
as to when you’d pay him back,
buy you lunch if you were strapped, 
hard to get started with
but once you were in with him
you were in.

Him unable to use a 
computer, him with his
paper, piles of it, boxes of it, 
him burrowing through
his paper to find fraud, waste,
nuggets of wrong; no one better
at it, all agreed, they handed him
every hard job, impossible error,
stubborn case.  But — 

him?  Him? Inflexible,
they charged.  Not versatile,
they whispered.  Too limited,
they agreed.

On his last day
he cried on my shoulder,
awkwardly, for all of 
ten or fifteen seconds.
He died 
within the year.

I heard a painter
railing against
nine-to-fivers,
a poet railing against 
nine-to-fivers, 
a musician shuddering
at having a nine-to-five
need-to-have, 
all variations of 

how can they go to work each day
and do that with no creativity
or room for play in a schedule?

I want to say,
you should have known him.  
Should have asked him.  
Should have
seen him cry to lose it,
should have
felt him die to not have it.
Should have
had him tell you
how he loved it, how it was like
mining, puzzling,
like a writer finding the pieces
to tell a story.

I want to say
art,
fucker,
is where you find it

and there are more places 
to look
than you, evidently,
have the imagination
to discover.